Saturday, January 25, 2014

Voter ID

This week, the Presidential Commission on Election Administration issued its report on improving voting in the U.S., and here’s hoping Americans pay attention to it. Our sloppy and archaic voting systems leave us tottering every election on the brink of another Florida-style electoral meltdown like the one we had in 2000. The president’s commission says that it’s finally time to address the systemic defects.

One of its recommendations is earlier voting registration, including allowing people to register online. With proper safeguards, such as requiring that people be already listed in some existing government database through which they can verify their identity, such reforms are laudable. The commission also recommended greater use of technologies that compare registration lists across state lines and that allow purges of ineligible voters. A 2012 Pew Foundation study found, for example, that 2.2 million dead people are still listed as being registered to vote...

We were reminded just this week of problems associated with absentee ballots. Guerrilla videographer James O’Keefe released an undercover video of a meeting of Battleground Texas, a leftist group working to elect Wendy Davis, the Democratic candidate for Texas governor. The video shows the Davis supporters ignoring questions about whether forging a signature on a relative’s absentee ballot was legal. “People do that all the time,” said Lisa Wortham, pretending to cover her ears. Wortham is an attorney and a deputy voter registrar working with the group. A volunteer from the group adds her opinion: “I don’t think that’s legal, I’ll do like Lisa did — I didn’t hear you say that.” Other Battleground Texas workers agree but jokingly cover their ears and also pretend not to hear.

This is why the subject is so important (and yes, I genuinely believe this is true):

Democrats, as matter of electoral strategy, rely on a lot of voter fraud, so it’s best for them to pretend it doesn’t exist, and to loudly scream racism when people point out that it does.

5 comments:

Darren: Go back and watch "We Will Not Be Silenced." Gigi Gaston, a Democrat, revealed serious breeches of Democrat Party rules in primary voting in Illinois, Texas and Ohio. We're still finding out about college students voting at school and at home. This may have given Obama the nomination. Sure it's old news, but it's still something the Obamites would rather bury than address.

My DH grew up in a Democrat-controlled city (essentially no Republicans) where poll workers knew what time of day the locals came in to vote. In the first election after his retirement, his grandfather came in to vote much later in the day than had been his custom, to find that he was listed as already having voted; poll workers assumed that he had died and voted for him. (bullet vote for Democrats, of course)

I also remember watching TV coverage of the 1960 election and hearing on-air comments that every graveyard in Chicago voted for JFK. As in Hudson County, NJ, Cook County IL (includes Chicago), was always had thes last precincts to report their votes and both would provide enough to ensure a Democratic victory.BAMN I'm sure they're still at it. It's simple arithmetic; the largest vote concentrations are in the big cities, which have always been controlled by the Democrats. I'm not saying that Republicans are all saints, but they simply don't have the iron-clad control of large numbers of high-population jurisdictions. Looking at the last couple of election maps, most of the country is red (Republican), but the vote-rich cities and metro areas are blue. (Democrat).

This should not be a partisan issue, and both major parties have cheated or tried to cheat. I think trying to make it one diminishes the true point. Why WOULDN'T you want to show proof that you were who you say you are when you voted? The mere fact that someone is checking makes me feel more confident about the outcome, regardless of whether fraud exists or not.

You may find evidence that both parties cheat but one party is adamantly opposed to any attempts ensure the vote's more honest and the other party supports those policies. If you're looking for similarities between the two parties you also ought to look for differences.

allen, I would agree with you that that is true, right now ... but that doesn't mean it always will be. The Democrat/liberal argument against voter ID is ridiculous, and I'm not sure it is even helpful to them. I would prefer a transparent (the correct definition, not the Obama one) process that doesn't depend on party or political affiliation. Voter ID laws are a great start ... and the Dems trying to block them does speak volumes.